Shared Points for SharePoint : developer

Undocumented stsadm command “stsadm –o uninstall”

Stian Kirkeberg — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:11:52 GMT

Unfortunately I discovered an undocumented stsadm command today; having gotten into the habit of typing in “stsadm –o commandname” to get the list of parameters needed, I got stung by entering the wrong command name.

I was looking for the parameters to “UninstallFeature”, but I typed only in “uninstall”:

“stsadm –o uninstall”

You should think that this is not a command so it doesn’t matter, even if you type in “stsadm –help” this command will not be listed. OK, I’ll admit my approach to typing in these commands is probably not the best way around, but that is not really the point.

The point is that this command is undocumented, it doesn’t take any arguments, and it will start uninstalling SharePoint without even a warning. So will have to do some manual cleanup and then run the configuration wizard again…

Hope this can warn you before you try this out and thanks to Roy for asking me about uninstalling features, before the coffee had time to kick in.

Links to related content:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms442691.aspx

http://nerdtastictips.blogspot.com/2009/04/never-ever-type-stsadm-o-uninstall-yes.html

A good under-the-hood SharePoint book?

Jon Løken — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:49:19 GMT

My former colleague Kjell-Sverre has written a review on the book Building the SharePoint User Experience, where he absolutely recommends reading the book. This is a hardcore book for SharePoint developers. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on its way.

Kjell-Sverre’s review is worth reading, including his follow up post on List Content Type Forms

Building the SharePoint User Experience (Expert's Voice in Sharepoint)

Copy listitems from one custom list to another, then move them into subfolders.

Stian Kirkeberg — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:01:15 GMT

One problem I stumbled over the other day, was how to copy item from one custom SPlist to another. The two lists are identical and I thought moving the items should be quite easy through use of the object model. It turned out be not so straight forward.

Normally, SPListItem.CopyFrom() and SPListItem.CopyTo() should do the trick:

SPListItem listItem = web.GetListItem(listItemUrl);
listItem.CopyTo(destinationUrl); // Copies the item to the specified destinations

or

listItem.CopyFrom(sourceUrl); // Overwrites the current item with the specified version of the item.

Sadly, this does not work with custom lists or custom properties. A small search on live.com showed that I was not the only one struggling with this. Several solutions are available like:
http://www.communardo.de/techblog/2008/01/08/sharepoint-listenelement-splistitem-in-eine-andere-liste-kopieren/ (you can read the code… )
http://www.informationworker.co.za/blogs/mirror/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=312

http://www.k2distillery.com/2007/10/copy-version-history-with_5.html

So, there is not really need for another posting of this code. Except for the fact that I wanted to move the copied item into subfolders. Trying to do so resulted in the error:
”Source item cannot be found. Verify that the item exists and that you have permission to read it.”
It doesn’t tell you much now does it?

But, if I combined the logic from the posts above with a SPFile.MoveTo(…) it was finally working OK.

SPListItem item = Web.Lists["Announcement"].GetItemById(5);
SPFile file = Web.GetFile(item.Url);
file.MoveTo("New location...with the ID_.000");

http://blogs.inetium.com/blogs/khofer/archive/2008/03/16/fix-can-t-move-copy-an-splistitem.aspx

Summarized:

1. Copy the item by iterating through all fields, and optionally for all versions of the item

2. Copy the attachments.

3. Delete the original item, if applicable.

4. Move the new item into appropriate subfolder.

Hope this can save you time if you need to do the same sort of thing.

New Version of SharePoint SiteConfigurator Feature Released!

Stian Kirkeberg — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:37:39 GMT

We have just released a new version of the SharePoint SiteConfigurator feature on codeplex.com.

In this release we have focused on some new features and making sure the build is stable. This involved some refactoring as well as splitting the project in three parts, one for the code and logic, one part for the feature and one test project. This new structure will make it much easier and faster to reuse the project from farm to farm.

As the release notes states, we also focused on:

split VS project in two for easier maintenance and upgrades
added Type Mock project (simply remove that project from the solution if you don't use it)
rewrote log functionality
added verbose logging option
fixed disabling of web part toolbar (still some minor issues here)
made the complete solution independent of it's features names.
Added provisioning of files and make it possible to choose welcome page based on xml parameter
Added support for links with parameters in AddQuickLaunchLinks
Created support for QuickLaunchHeading and
DeleteQuickLaunchHeading elements.
Rearranged and refactored the main project
Fixed some bugs

Enjoy the new release and please give us feedback so we can improve it further!

Unit testing MOSS part 2 (of 2)

Jan Tore Lamøy — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:29:00 GMT

In the 1. article on Unit testing MOSS I described some of the findings and experience on unit testing SharePoint applications using the TypeMock Isolator framework. In this 2. article I will provide some examples of unit tests. Code under test You should...(read more)

Unit testing MOSS part 1 (of 2)

Jan Tore Lamøy — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:53:00 GMT

Some of our team members, including me and Frank Jusnes , were recently responsible for providing recommendations on how to unit test in SharePoint projects, and this is an overview of our findings and experiences. This is the first of two posts on the...(read more)

Announcing SharePoint Site Configurator Feature on CodePlex

Stian Kirkeberg — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:32:30 GMT

It is an pleasure to announce the second of our two new SharePoint projects on Codeplex.com: Project Description SharePoint Site Configurator Feature is a small framework for taking care of all configurations, settings and featurestapling you need for...(read more)

Announcing SharePoint PowerShell Deploy on CodePlex

Stian Kirkeberg — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:31:41 GMT

It is an pleasure to announce the first of our two new SharePoint projects on Codeplex.com: Project Description SharePoint PowerShell Deploy is a set of PowerShell files to help you build, deploy, upgrade and destroy a SharePoint farm. It can be used...(read more)

Estimate performance and capacity requirements for InfoPath Forms Services environments

Stian Kirkeberg — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:00:55 GMT

New document on performance published on Technet ; gives good guidance and recommendations for use of Forms Server and dataconnections. In this article: Key characteristics Test environment Test results Recommendations This performance and capacity planning...(read more)

How To: Creating a VS web application below a SharePoint IIS web application

Stian Kirkeberg — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:38:29 GMT

In certain scenarioes it would be very convenient to create a full Visual Studio web application below a SharePoint web application. This can be when you have a lot of asp.net files which do not have many connections or use of SharePoint functionality,...(read more)

How to create Site Collection in a specific content dateabase part 2

Stian Kirkeberg — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:07:45 GMT

Following up on Thomas' post on how to create a site collection in a specific content database:

You can also use the STSADM command CreateSiteInNewDB

However this does not quite cut it. You would like to decide on which content database each time. To do that, you could use stsadm extensions. It will require some codewriting and testing, though. Luckily, a MVP, Gary Lapointe, has already made it for you. A "Create site in database" is available in his stsadm custom extension kit:

There are also other STSADM extensions available. If you have used or made one you would like to share, please send me an mail.

Please be aware that some of his extensions are made by use of reflection on MOSS assemblies, so take whaterever precautions you need in regard to this.

Sample code acceptance checklist for IT organizations

Stian Kirkeberg — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:41:33 GMT

"Web sites that are based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 often include custom solutions. The ability to customize sites by adding custom solutions gives Office SharePoint Server 2007 power and flexibility. However, a poorly designed or implemented executable module that runs in a SharePoint farm can do harm even beyond the scope of the Web application for which it was intended. Poorly implemented custom solutions can introduce security or performance risks, increase the cost of support, complicate deployment, and reduce productivity.
Because the impact of installing custom solutions in a SharePoint server farm can be either positive or negative, we recommend that you to carefully evaluate all custom solutions before deploying them in your production environment. Among the areas to evaluate are the following:

Was the solution developed, tested, and piloted consistently with the best practices described in Design and build sites for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and in white papers such as Implementing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Solutions?

Along with requiring that the solution be developed in accordance with general best practices, we recommend that you have developers submit a checklist to verify that their solutions have been coded and tested according to best practices.
(...)"

Sample code acceptance checklist for IT organizations

List scalability and capacity planning

Øyvind Nordnes — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:38:33 GMT

Joel Oleson recently published a collection of recommended resources for MOSS list scalability and capacity planning in a blog post called Revisiting List Scalability.

It contains articles, whitepapers and case studies, and there is some really useful stuff in there, so check it out!

SharePoint Development and Programming FAQ

Stian Kirkeberg — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:37:52 GMT

MSDN forums opened SharePoint Development and Programming FAQ recently - add it to your favorites right away! :)

SharePoint 2007 Features project on CodePlex

Stian Kirkeberg — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:38:39 GMT

A project on CodePlex adding a lot of value for SharePoint projects is the "SharePoint 2007 features" project. It has grown considerable during it lifetime and it is absolutly worthwhile checking back from time to time.

Content Type Hierarchy Feature (separate download)

Log Viewer Feature (separate download)

Manage Form Users Feature (separate download)

Presence Contact List Feature (separate download)

Placeholder Master Feature (separate download)

Print List Feature (separate download)

Task Alert Feature (separate download)

Task Mover Feature (separate download)

Theme Changer Feature (separate download)

Debugger Feature (separate download)

Documentation June 11, 2008

All Features in a single download